The Return of Fall Out Boy

Would have preferred Blood Makes Noise anyway.

I wish I could get into this band because so many of the critics I respect and agree with more than any other are into them, but my aversion is so visceral and immediate.

This album does sound less like having locker room jocks ask "why do you keep hitting yourself?" than the last one, though, so I guess that's something?

Really? I'd say it's precisely the opposite.

Their opening act on the upcoming tour is frat-rapper Hoodie Allen.

I think this one scales back the mock-Bon Jovi, beer can crushing production a little bit

the video for AB/AP is repulsive

?

DON'T YOU REMEMBER HOW WE USED TO SPLIT A DRINK?
IT NEVER MATTERED WHAT IT WAS
I THINK

lol i love that line

our hands were just that close

if you knew
knew
what the bluebirds sing at you
you
would never sing along

^^^^^^^^

havent bought this yet not sure i will even, don't like centuries @ all but kids arent all right is a jam

ABAP hot takes:

"Irrestistible" – Great lead track, comes out swinging full power, clenched teeth, hooks for days. Something military about it, might be off-putting for some, but I'm enjoying the firepower.

"American Beauty, American Psycho" – Some fun bits, but blech, irritating as fuck. Can't imagine this succeeding as a single. To the extent that I can hear the drumming, it sounds great :D/D:

"Centuries" – The suffocating, grotesquely cloying downside of Tim's "they added too much bombast to ordinary songs until they exploded, and then they pieced together new songs out of the shards" formulation. Pushing real damn hard for an early call on the year's worst video, too. Fuck FOB.

"The Kids Aren't Alright" – Okay, this is more like it. Lovely vocal performance from Stump. Digestible bombast/content ratio.

"Uma Thurman" – The "Munsters Theme" has a deathless grip on my brain's pleasure centers, one of my all-time favorite musical anythings, so I'm stupid with happy at odd intervals during this otherwise merely brilliant song. Up there with "This Ain't a Scene" as a one-track band summary.

"Jet Pack Blues" – The mid-tempo tracks might be taking this. Just beautiful.

"Novocaine" – Is there any contemporary rock band more dependent on "weird noises" for their appeal? Not faulting the band, I like weird noises, just asking. Decent song, though I'm starting to experience boldness fatigue, a Slim Jim snapping in a human face, forever.

"Fourth of July" – Not that I was expecting a ballad…

"Favorite Record" – Like "Jet Pack Blues" a demonstration that pulled punches sometimes hit harder. Hugely welcome after two tracks of beatdown slog.

"Immortals" – Figured from the title that this would suck in the decisive manner of "Centuries", but it's goddam awesome. Music by which to make rash decisions. Hey, we should drive to Vegas, get married, and not tell anyone. Like right now.

"Twin Skeleton's (Hotel in NYC)" – Nice closer, though not an immediate favorite. Danny Elfman soundtrack vibes.

the video for AB/AP is repulsive

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 21, 2015 10:04 AM (3 days ago)

yeah, it's as gross as the "centuries" vid, tho in a different way.

lol so "centuries" becomes weirdly seductive on repeat listens, and it definitely should if you like "immortals" ffs

they announced a show in Concord, couple hrs from here

cmon boys, i love you but can i plz get a show closer to home?

might skip this tour unless they've suddenly flooded their setlist with folie songs, although "ab/ap" from videos seems awesome live

although this is the second time in two years fob is playing jones beach two days before my birthday, just with wiz khalifa subbed for paramore :\

they announced a show in l.a., couple thousand miles from here

Think this is okay, not as good as SRNR, don't look the songs where they trade in menace (hidden or otherwise) for goof like the title track

Uma Thurman is a fine track

Hope that this grows up on me

*like

Think I just want a few tracks that are as immediately bombastic as RTT or SRNR :(

felt the same way but realized the tracks that serve that want are "kids aren't alright" and "fourth of july"

ugh i guess i'm listening to this record again

Listening to 4OJ rn and it is beginning to reveal its glories to me

somehow missed that ellen video maura posted but patrick should continue to consider not wearing his fedora

Secretly hope that Twin Skeleton's is about Best line from TripAdvisor reviews of the Hotel Carter in NYC

rewatching the ab/ap video and failing to find it uh repulsive

"centuries" video is definitely miscalculated and overwrought yeah

The stench/the stench/of summer sex/and ck eternity/oh hell yes

:S

i can't speak to tracer's revulsion, but i'm put off by emo's fundamental relationship construction, where a woman's job is to be so devastatingly wicked gorgeous that the poor, angst-filled sucker she's entrapped will willingly (if wrathfully) endure her gender's inevitable perfidy, generating grist for his next batch of art tantrums. she glows darkly, he suffers tunefully, blah blah blah. squares way too neatly with gross, self-pitying MRA bullshit.

video seems to enact this, with the lovely toybox image of the pretty ballerina suckering innocent boys into a depiction of love as a deathmatch. in the end, with our face-painted protagonist bloodied in defeat, she readies her trap for a new victim. "altar boys, altar boys, we're the thing that love destroys." fuck off.

that strain in emo is why i welcome the jocky qualities in fob discussed above: the wentzvoice never lacks selfconfidence and is more rueful than angry about relationship fuckups. it fetishizes the mutual violence in love (that video misses the mutual part) which is prob unhealthy in a rocknroll tradition of unhealthiness but not necc misog imo, and also not incompatible with having a good time. in comparison something like dashboard often sounds to me like the underground man w a guitar: toxically uncomfortable with himself. (i don't know dashboard v well maybe this is unfair.) i was going to say fob's objectification/essentialization of girlz is more like mick jagger's but then i thought nah there's nothing even as nasty as "stupid girl" or "back street girl" or even as outright domineering as "under my thumb" that i can think of in their catalog. they're more like an entire band of "bitch".

yeah, that's fair (+ insightful). i don't have a problem with FOB's gender politics, generally speaking, just that particular video.

yeah outright grossness in FOB is fairly rare, though I do always megacringe at "let's get you wasted and alone" in "Death Valley"

YOU LOOK SO GOOD IN BLUE also prob.

well i dunno. yours is worse.

i can't speak to tracer's revulsion, but i'm put off by emo's fundamental relationship construction, where a woman's job is to be so devastatingly wicked gorgeous that the poor, angst-filled sucker she's entrapped will willingly (if wrathfully) endure her gender's inevitable perfidy, generating grist for his next batch of art tantrums. she glows darkly, he suffers tunefully, blah blah blah. squares way too neatly with gross, self-pitying MRA bullshit.

i dunno, I always get the impression that the FOB narrative character is suffering and kinda loves it, there's a masochistic quality which is threaded by the (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied) awareness that he has also made her/you suffer as well and so at some level has decided he deserves the punishment.

I don't think this is healthy or admirable at all but it seems to me to be quite different from MRA bullshit.

i agree! FOB, for the most part, steer quite nimbly around the worst excesses invited by the genre's "arrgh, she woundeth!" core. they're more about the thrill of surrender than petulant seething. it's the video i was kvetching about.

even despite pete's grossness over time I still read this video as being about toxic masculinity so idk

that may be, interpretation is always dicey ¯\(°_°)/¯

https://40.media.tumblr.com/94352aeeb0ef1214b2786f45e1e791e8/tumblr_niaw62CXjB1tkq59qo1_500.jpg

haha wow i never realized that cover was all photograph and not photoshop

wtf

yeah, it's crazy. i never considered that it might be anything but photoshop (or similar) work. hardly thought about it at all, tbh.

http://a585.phobos.apple.com/us/r2000/003/Music/b2/a0/67/mzi.gldpdcvw.600x600-75.jpg

but looking now, it seems so...obvious.

http://i.imgur.com/V1AximV.jpg

good response. i hope Pete has matured to the point now that he regrets the THROWN OUT THE HOOD bit in the "This Ain't A Scene" video.

Definitely more worried about the Hoodie Allen crowd.

hoodie allen fans are definitely terrifying although not for the reason I'm guessing that atrocious woman thinks wiz's crowd is terrifying

she heard that they dem boyz and they makin noise. hol up!